Defenseless
Minorities
Tushar
Ranjan Mohanty
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management
Eleven
civilians were killed and 56 injured in a suicide attack
by two Islamic States (IS, also Daesh) terrorists on the
Bethel Memorial Methodist Church in Quetta, the provincial
capital of Balochistan, on December 17, 2017. Police Guards
stationed at the church entrance and on its roof killed
one terrorist but the second detonated his explosives-filled
vest outside the prayer hall, Provincial Home Minister
Sarfraz Bugti confirmed, causing all the casualties. Police
Official Abdur Razaq Cheema disclosed further that two
other terrorists managed to escape. At the time of the
incident there were nearly 400 worshippers in the church
for the pre-Christmas service. The IS claimed the attack.
One seven-year-old
boy was killed when an unidentified terrorist hurled a
hand grenade at a Christian colony in the Chaman area
of Qilla Abdullah District, Balochistan, on December 1,
2017. "It was a hand grenade which caused the explosion
at the colony's gate," Gul Mohammad, a local Police
officer disclosed, adding, "The blast also smashed
windows in nearby homes."
On October
7, 2017, terrorists hurled a hand grenade at a church
at Shah Zaman Road in Quetta, but no casualties were reported.
According
to partial data compiled by the Institute for Conflict
Management (ICM), these were the three terrorism-related
attacks on Christian community in which 12 persons were
killed and 56 others sustained injures during the current
year (data till December 25, 2017). During the corresponding
period of 2016, there were two such incidents which had
resulted in 76 fatalities and 305 persons injured. No
such incident was reported during the remaining period
of 2016.
Terrorist
attacks on Christians are not a new phenomenon in the
theocratic state of Pakistan. Indeed, Pakistan has witnessed
at least 25 such incidents resulting in 246 fatalities
and 603 persons injured since March 2000 (data till December
21, 2017). Some of the prominent terrorism-related incidents
targeting the Christian community across Pakistan included:
March 27,
2016: At least 74 people were killed and more than 300
injured in a suicide blast inside the Gulshan-e-Iqbal
Park in the Iqbal Town area of Lahore, the provincial
capital of Punjab Province, when Christians were celebrating
Easter. ‘Spokesperson’ of the Jama’at-ul-Ahrar (JuA),
a breakaway faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan
(TTP),
Ehsanullah Ehsan declared, “We had been waiting for this
occasion. We claim responsibility for the attack on Christians
as they were celebrating Easter. It was part of the annual
martyrdom attacks we have started this year.”
March 15,
2015: At least 15 persons, including 13 Christians and
two Policemen, were killed and more than 70 were injured,
when two suicide bombers attacked two churches near the
Youhanabad neighbourhood in Lahore, sparking mob violence
in which two terrorists were killed. Youhanabad is home
to more than 100,000 Christians. JuA had claimed responsibility
for the attack as well.
September
22, 2013: At least 79 worshippers, including 34 women
and seven children, were killed and another 130 were injured
when two suicide bombers attacked a Christian congregation
at the historic All Saints Church in the Kohati Gate area
of Peshawar, the provincial capital of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
(KP) Province, on September 22, 2013. Ahmed Marwat, ‘a
spokesman’ for the Jundullah group, a faction of the TTP,
claimed responsibility for the attack, and declared, in
a statement to the media, "Until and unless drone
strikes are stopped, we will continue our attacks on non-Muslims
on Pakistani land. They are the enemies of Islam, therefore
we target them."
March 10,
2010: Six persons, including two women, were killed and
seven persons were injured when over a dozen terrorists
armed with Kalashnikov rifles, pistols and hand-grenades
attacked the office of World Vision International, a US-based
Christian aid agency, in the Oghi village of Mansehra
District in KP.
December
25, 2002: Three women were killed and 15 persons were
injured in a grenade attack on the United Presbyterian
Church near Sialkot in Punjab.
September
25, 2002: Seven persons were killed and another three
were injured in a terrorist attack on a Christian welfare
organisation's office, Idara Amn-o-Insaaf (Institute
for Peace and Justice), in Karachi, the provincial capital
of Sindh. Lashkar-e-Islami Mohammadi (LIM), a little-known
terrorist group, was blamed for the attack.
August
5, 2002: Six persons were killed and another four were
injured in a terrorist attack on a Christian missionary
school in the Jhika Gali Town of Murree tehsil
(revenue unit) in Rawalpindi District of Punjab.
March 17,
2002: Five persons were killed and more than 40 were injured,
including the High Commissioner of Sri Lanka to Pakistan,
in a grenade attack during the Sunday morning service
at the Protestant International Church located between
the American and Russian Embassies in the heavily protected
area of the Diplomatic Enclave in Islamabad.
October
28, 2001: 17 Christians – including five children – and
one Policeman were killed and nine persons injured, when
six gunmen opened fire on a church in the Model Town area
of Bahawalpur District in Punjab.
Other than
Christians, other religious minorities have regularly
faced atrocities across Pakistan. The Jinnah Institute
of Pakistan, in a report titled State of Religious Freedom
in Pakistan 2015, had noted that, during the period 2012-2015,
at least 543 incidents of violence were recorded against
religious minorities in Pakistan. Shias were targeted
on at least 288 occasions during this period, followed
by Hindus (91 occasions), Christians (88 occasions), and
Ahamadiyas (76 occasions).
Christians
constitute a meagre 1.6 percent of Pakistan’s population
of 193 million. While they have been victims of terrorist
atrocities, they have also been intermittently attacked
in mass and targeted violence by Islamist extremists.
Right-wing vigilantes and mobs have taken the law into
their own hands, killing at least 69 people over alleged
blasphemy since 1990, according to an April 13, 2017,
report. Most recently, a Christian teenager, Sharoon Masih
(17), was beaten to death by his classmates for drinking
from the same glass used by a Muslim student in the Vehari
District of Punjab on August 30, 2017. Media reports indicated
that the boy was killed just because of his faith. His
mother Razia Bibi had warned Sharoon not to mix with the
boys who practiced Islam after one of them had reportedly
told him (Masih), “You're a Christian don't dare sit with
us if you want to live.” Sharoon was just on his fourth
day at his new school at the Government Model MC High
School in Burewala.
Christians
have been systematically
targeted by Pakistan’s perverse blasphemy
laws, which prescribe a mandatory death sentence for any
act purportedly bringing Islam and its Prophet to disrepute.
Most recently, a Christian man, Nadeem James Masih, was
sentenced to death on September 15, 2017, for blasphemy.
Nadeem was arrested in July 2016, after his friend Yasir
Bashir told the Police that he sent him a poem on WhatsApp
that was insulting to Islam. Following the incident, Masih
fled from his home in Sara-e-Alamgir town in Punjab to
escape an angry mob that had gathered there, but later
surrendered to the Police. His trial continued for more
than a year at the Gujrat Jail in Punjab. Besides the
death sentence, Masih has been fined PKR 300,000. While
not a single convict has ever been executed for blasphemy
in Pakistan, there are currently about 40 people on death
row or serving life sentences for the crime, according
to a release dated April 26, 2017, by the United States
Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
Underlining
the weakness in the existing blasphemy law, the Islamabad
High Court asked Parliament on August 11, 2017, to make
changes to the current decree to prevent people from being
falsely accused of the crime. In a 116-page order, Justice
Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui suggested that Parliament amend
the law to require the same punishment of the death penalty
for those who falsely allege blasphemy, as for those who
commit the crime. "Currently, there is a very minor
punishment for falsely accusing someone of blasphemy,"
the judgment noted.
Significantly,
then Federal Minister for Minorities’ Affairs, Shahbaz
Bhatti, a Christian, was killed on March 2, 2011, by terrorists
of the Fidayeen-e-Muhammad, a TTP faction, and al Qaeda
Punjab Chapter, for his opposition to the country’s blasphemy
laws. Christians have also been attacked for opposing
often forcible conversions to Islam. Asia Bibi (46), a
Christian woman from the Sheikhupura District of Punjab,
who has been sentenced to death and has been in prison
for the last four years following a conviction for blasphemy,
in her memoir Blasphemy, describes how she had
been asked to convert to Islam to ‘redeem herself’. The
Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, came forward in her
support and asserted that the blasphemy law had been abused
in her case. Taseer was later killed by his bodyguard,
Mumtaz Qadri on January 4, 2011, for his support to Asia
Bibi and a campaign for amendment to the blasphemy law.
As SAIR
had noted earlier, seeds of religious intolerance have
been systematically sown in Pakistan since its inception
in 1947 – and, indeed, even earlier, during the struggle
for independence. There was a further and escalating radicalization
during and after the regime of military dictator General
Zia-ul-Haq. Since then, Pakistan has witnessed rising
attacks against all minorities, including the Christians.
The 2017 Annual Report of USCIRF noted that “during the
past year, the Pakistani Government continued to perpetrate
and tolerate systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious
freedom violations. Religiously discriminatory constitutional
provisions and legislation, such as the country’s blasphemy
and anti-Ahamadiyas laws, continue to result in prosecutions
and imprisonments.”
Moreover,
there were many
instances that reiterated the fact
that religious extremists have enormous support across
Pakistan. In the most recent
assertion of radicalized groups in
the country, the Federal Government bowed down before
violent Islamist protesters. On October 2, 2017, the National
Assembly passed the ‘Election Bill 2017’, making changes
in the Khatm-e-Nabuwat [finality of Prophet-hood] clause
of the earlier Bill. Soon after, countrywide protests
led by Tehreek-e-Labaik of Pakistan (TLP), an Islamist
party, erupted against this change. Other pro-Muslim parties,
such as Pakistan Sunni Tehreek and Tehreek-e-Khatme Nabuwwat
(Movement for the Finality of Prophet-hood) also lent
their support, demanding the resignation of Law Minister
Zahid Hamid for removing the clause which, according to
these groups undermined Islamic beliefs and amounted to
blasphemy. Mounting pressure, the protestors began camping
at Islamabad’s Faizabad Traffic Interchange from November
6, 2017. The Government restored the original clause on
November 17, 2017, but the Islamists continued with their
protest. Eventually, on November 25, 2017, bloody clashes
took place just outside Islamabad, in which at least six
people were killed and another 200 were injured. Speaking
from the site of the clashes, TLP 'spokesman' Ejaz Ashrafi
declared, “We are in our thousands. We will not leave.
We will fight until end.” Clashes also took place elsewhere
in the country and continued on November 26 as well. Order
was restored only after the resignation of Law Minister
Hamid on November 27, and with the Army mediating between
the protest leaders and the Government.
Christians
in particular and other religious minorities at large
will continue to suffer as long as the establishment maintains
its policy of appeasement of Islamist extremists and fundamentalists.
Given the past record of the state policy, there seems
to be no foreseeable end to this tragic chain of events.
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